To add, Taxol , and it’s natural plant source, is toxic to cellular growth, so serves to protect the plant against it’s natural pathogen enemies. Nice common sense development in the world, and that modus operandi can be used to combat the rampant cell growth in cancer. Simple procedure. Keep the invaders at bay.
With Hoodia, it’s a different MO: not a killing pathogen survival mechanism, but a glucose response strategy. The active substance apparently is a saccharide response of protection. Other plants do this: echinacea and larch come to mind. I don’t know enough to explain it chemically, and would love to hear more solid explaination.
Perhaps it’s another means to dissuade animals from overgrazing it–animal comes by, eats a bit of the plant, then feels “full” almost immediately, stops grazing, and the plant survives.
Hoodia must be great stuff - this site gave it an award! As follows:
Worst Product: Nutrathin With Hoodia. The gimmick here is that the plant Hoodia is supposedly a miracle cure for obesity that originates with the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. CBS aired a 60-Minutes puff story on Hoodia last November, portraying the plant as a “natural substance that literally takes your appetite away… Scientists say it fools the brain by making you think you’re full, even if you’ve eaten just a morsel.” The idea is that Bushmen have eaten this plant for thousands of years to assuage their hunger when starving, and look how thin they are! (Never mind that thinness is a given for hunter-gatherers, running and scavenging all day for food.) Since the CBS story, hoodia has blossomed on the quackery scene and has been added as an ingredient – or more likely the ghost of an ingredient – to many diet products. The pseudo-scientific claim for Nutrathin With Hoodia is that it works within the satiety center by releasing a chemical compound similar to glucose but much stronger: “You not only suppress your appetite and avoid overeating, you literally stop being obsessed over food.” Again, where’s the research?
You’re always going to find dramatic personal testimonials for any ‘miracle’ supplement on the market. Testimonials (even if you have utter faith that the people who present them are reliable) are essentially worthless. The key is well-conducted clinical trials showing effectiveness and safety, which don’t exist for Hoodia.
After this plant is driven to extinction by gullible dieters and the companies that exploit them, there’ll be a mad rush to the next ‘miracle’ supplement.
As my old E.R. mentor Howard Burns once said (to a morbidly obese patient): “You need to eat less.”
[QUOTE=Anise]
Well, I thought I’d answer the original question on this thread (I’m not sure if anyone ever actually did!)
I researched hoodia supplements available online and ordered one that had the South African government exportation certificate, plus everything else that had been recommended as a way to try to make sure it was the genuine article. Yes, I felt dumb doing this, and I’m not sure I would have bought it if I couldn’t have done it anonymously. But I felt that I had to try it, or I’d always wonder if it would have worked.
To give some background, before I started taking it, I’d already given up sugar, caffeine, and most white flour. I’m a hardcore gym rat, so I was already going to the Y six days a week. BUT… I was still eating all kinds of other junk. I knew what I should be eating, but I couldn’t quite seem to ever quite stick to it.
I’ve now been taking hoodia for about a week, 750 mg in the morning and again at night. I have no idea what the long-term effects are or if it even works over the long run…HOWEVER… I can tell you that right now, for me, it is absolutely working the way they say it does. I’m just not as interested in eating as I was before-- almost all of the cravings are either really muted or completely gone. It’s not that I’ve lost all interest in food or anything like that, but I feel able to eat the way I know I should be eating. I haven’t noticed any side effects at all.
So, I’m impressed. I didn’t expect this to actually work, and as I said, in the long run it may not, but for now, hoodia has lived up to its hype 100%!!
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I hope this isn’t a zombie thread yet -
but could you please give a link to the site you ordered this from?
Thanks!
I don’t really get physically hungry with or without it, but it does seem to reduce cravings. Whether that’s psychosomatic or not, I couldn’t say, but it really doesn’t matter as long as it’s working. And it doesn’t seem to be dangerous, so why not?
Ephedra works better though. Not as safe and harder to come by and some people don’t like the way it makes them feel, and it is a barely-legal sort of thing, but it works…
I don’t really get physically hungry with or without it, but it does seem to reduce cravings. Whether that’s psychosomatic or not, I couldn’t say, but it really doesn’t matter as long as it’s working. And it doesn’t seem to be dangerous, so why not?
Ephedra works better though. Not as safe and harder to come by and some people don’t like the way it makes them feel, and it is a barely-legal sort of thing, but it works…
[/QUOTE]
Ephedra makes it hard for me to sleep ( that could because of past use that had nothing to do with weight loss). Does Hoodia have some of the same effects as ephedra? (Other then potential appetite suppresion)
[QUOTE=Queuing]
Ephedra makes it hard for me to sleep ( that could because of past use that had nothing to do with weight loss). Does Hoodia have some of the same effects as ephedra? (Other then potential appetite suppresion)
[/QUOTE]
This is a rather uninformed guess, but there’s no obvious reason why it should cause sleeplessness. Ephedra is a stimulant; one of the side effects of all stimulants is reduced appetite. This appears not to work via the same mechanism at all, and so there’s no reason to think it would cause insomnia.
I tried it the other day, and I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. The temporary extra energy was great, but the tingling in my fingers and the “why won’t my pulse slow down already?” feeling was less great.